


The Company You Keep

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Non-canonical footnotes, the woes of being the Champion of Kirkwall's lover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:43:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2817560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris thumbs through a history of the Free Marches and arrives at a disturbing conclusion about Hawke's fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Company You Keep

_"But Champion is not an appointment that can be sought. It cannot be owned or willed, and the process by which it is bestowed is not argued through policy or guile. It is earned with blood and sweat and leadership in times of great turmoil. Always worthy, as their deeds are true importance, a Champion is greeted not by debate, but by nods of reverence....All that is common is that they have an effect and lives are changed._

_"Kirkwall now adds to the history of the title, a first for the city, on this 9:34 Dragon. The Qunari are repelled by means respected, and it remains to be seen what follows for this 'Hawke,' the Champion of Kirkwall."_

\- From The Champion: History, Ancient and Current, excerpted by Philliam, a Bard!

.

.

.

The book was heavy in his hands.

Fenris scratched the ears of the mabari sleeping beside him. They were sprawled on a cot in his bedroom, surrounded by dusty tomes and mildew stained blankets. If the mabari minded being used as a pillow, he didn't show it.

There were few pleasures greater in life than stealing a book from Hawke's library (or ten), reclining with a bottle of wine and a tin of mint chocolate treacle (also stolen from Hawke), and wasting the day away. Better yet if it was raining or a chill autumn wind shaking the juniper tree in Fenris' courtyard and shifting cool, green shadows across the walls.

But not today.

Today he clenched his jaw.

The mabari's ears pricked. A moment later the front door of the mansion opened and slammed shut. The unseen visitor gulped cold air, presumably taking a moment to tug off his gloves before crunching through the autumn leaves that now littered the foyer and mounting the steps to the bedroom.

Fenris sat up to let the mabari greet his master.

"Aha." Hawke bent down to pet Barnabas. His cheeks were as red as if he'd been slapped. "I should have known you were harboring a dangerous fugitive."

"Bath time already?" murmured Fenris, not looking up.

Barnabas whined. Hawke gave him a kiss and scrubbed his ears.

"A reprieve, nothing more." Hawke's grunted and collapsed into the nearest chair. "Maker, you would not believe how long I had to wait-"

"Do you know who this is?" Fenris turned around the book.

"-to have a cloak fitted for my favorite fish monger's funeral. Thanks for asking." Hawke squinted. "What exactly am I looking at, other than a bad nameday party?"

"Cade Arvail of Rivain, the Champion of Tantervale: he ceased the Navarran expansion into the Free Marches during the Blessed Age."

"And that's him being-"

"Drawn and quartered and castrated in a public square. For challenging the Baron over taxation."

"Ouch."

Fenris flipped to a previous chapter and held up the book again. "Gerrin Waters, Champion of Hercinia in the Exalted Age: his stomach slit open and starving weasels slipped inside him when he was revealed to be an Imperium spy."

"Creative."

Flip flip flip. "Katrina de la Rúa, the Champion of Ansburg-"

"Retired to the Sunset Sea with a harem?"

"Boiled alive." Fenris tapped a woodblock of Katrina being lowered into a vat of fiery pig's blood. "For sleeping with the Margrave's wife."

"Sounds like my kind of woman."

Hawke's lopsided grin died as Fenris quietly closed the book. He tilted his head to read the cover.

"Let me guess, most Champions never made it to retirement."

"No," said Fenris. "They did not."

"I must say, that's morbid fare even for you. Where did you find it?"

"In your study." One of countless histories Hawke had received as gifts across the years and never touched. "I borrowed it some time ago."

"And pick it up whenever you need a good bedtime story?"

"Only when it becomes relevant."

"And what's that supposed to mean? Wait." Hawke stopped scratching Barney's ears. "Don't tell me those stories _actually_ bother you?" When Fenris didn't answer, he gave a bark of laughter. "You're wonderful."

Whatever expression curdled on Fenris' face must have been menacing, because it pressed Hawke back in his chair.

"I'm flattered, truly! But it's sensationalism, Fen, mummers' history. Sold to merchants and lettered commons who can't afford a decent library. And written by....ugh, Philliam, A BARD!" Hawke threw his hands up and let them fall limp. "As if that shouldn't tip you off."

Silence was never a garment Hawke wore comfortably. He crossed his legs and scratched at the red bumps on his throat where he must have, typical, shaved with a dry razor.

"We both known you're not that lacking in perspective."

"You and I differ a great deal in our perspective," said Fenris, unable to hide his bitterness.

"Now you're just being enigmatic....and starting to make me nervous. Where's this coming from, really?

"Am I not permitted to point out disturbing patterns?"

Hawke rolled his eyes. "Fine, if that's how you want to play it, I'm doomed because every Champion who ever lived ever drowned in diarrhea." He frowned. "Surely there were _some_ who survived into old age?"

There were, in fact. Fenris had spent all morning learning about them--Champions who led long lives filled with lust and love and and song and glory--but for every happy ending there was a darker twin. A Champion of Ostwick nailed to the ground inside a spider nest after he publicly defended the Qun; a Champion of Starkhaven torn apart by a starving mob when it was rumored she used her title to grow fat during the Second Blight; a later Starkhavener strangled with fishing line by a petty footpad in a tavern privy. On and on, the great and glorious heroes of the Free Cities cut down, their bloody victories rivaled only by their bloody ends.

_"They are sons and daughters of the Marches,"_ Philliam wrote in his introduction. _"Merchants and refugees, nobles and mercenaries: each as different from the other as Markham from Hasmal, Tantervale from Wycome. But know this, undeniably, every Champion has belonged first and foremost to their city. Whether native born or washed up upon the shores, their blood is in the stone, and it is in service to their cities that these great men and women to give their lives. To Ostwick, Wildervale, Cumberland-"_

The only city not mentioned was Kirkwall.

"I heard what happened in the square yesterday," said Fenris. "Your display with the Knight-Commander and First Enchanter."

A rat chewed at a support beam somewhere in the walls. Fenris had not bothered to light a fire that morning, and the chill of the bare stone floor had sunk into his skin, numbing his bare toes and drawing out his heat.

Hawke did not move for a long time.

"Ah," he said finally.

"Yes," agreed Fenris. "Ah."

"I take it I'm in trouble then."

"You do not need me to make trouble for yourself."

"Would it help if I said I just stepped out to meet Hubert about missing shipments when they roped me into their snit?"

"That never stopped you from turning your back before."

"Yes, well, there was a crowd this time? Believe me, had I known Orsino had the eyes and ears of a blighted lynx I would have jumped in the bushes and let them rut it out themselves. I don't see why this is a problem." 

Fenris pursed his lips. "You should have walked away." He set the book aside. The rest of the morning would pivot around his next few words. "From the mage."

Hawke pinched the bridge of his nose as if against an oncoming headache. "Fen-"

"The mages in this city are a sinking ship, and yet you insist on anchoring yourself to them."

"If the ship is sinking why does it need--no, forget it. You know where I stand on the issue."

"This is not simply a matter of agreeing to disagree."

"We've been through this-"

"That is not the point, Hawke!"

Fenris lurched off the the floor and began to pace.

"You should know better," he said, muttering to himself and aware of it. "You should know better than anyone what's at stake."

"Other than Kirkwall burning to the ground? No, not the faintest clue. Those dozen summons spilling across my desk must be from Pastry Chef Orsino and Remigold Instructor Meredith."

"If you would joke about this then you are a bigger fool than I thought."

"The fool in your bed," muttered Hawke before his face darkened. "And for the record, love, whether you think my actions foolish or not, every moment I'm not with you I spend balancing a hundred egos in this blighted city, all while hurling myself between two tigers trying to tear each other's throats out. Whatever I do, I do to give us a few extra hours sleep at night." 

It was Fenris' turn to pinch his nose against a headache. He did not doubt Hawke's dedication to Kirkwall, not for an instant, but....

_Disemboweled. Drawn and quartered. Boiled alive._

"You would draw the wrath of the powerful down on your head," said Fenris.

"Must be a Tuesday."

"Do not jest. It would cost Meredith nothing to dispose of you, no more than the price of an Antivan Crow."

"I'm sure she lies awake some nights tallying the bill."

 _"Do not."_ Fenris' finger punctuated each word like an acid-dipped arrow. "Jest."

A cold wind rattled the windowpanes. Light and shadow thrown from the juniper masked over Hawke's face, camouflaging his expression. Fenris' teeth ached from grinding them. His blood was spiked with _rage_ now, and a newer, more disturbing emotion that threatened to tighten his throat. 

"This city spins closer to madness every day and you think taunting the Knight-Commander will make things better?"

"It certainly can't make things worse," said Hawke.

"She is not some drunken Templar at the Hanged Man you can taunt without consequence. She is not some Orlesian duke you can hurl off a cliff before darting back across the border-"

"Andraste's ass, you're really going to drag out that dead cat again?"

 _"The point,"_ Fenris gritted out. "is that you poke a dragon in the eye and think yourself invincible. You jape and joke and wag that tongue of yours _ceaselessly_ and never dream someone might cut it out." His fingers squeezed open and closed. "You refuse to take a lesson."

There was a momentary, strange flicker of recognition in Hawke's eyes, before he blinked back to attention and said softly, "Where is this coming from? If you've always had this problem with me being Champion, why not bring it up before at, I don't know, Chateau Haine or that mess with the Wardens? Why should this stick in your craw worse than any other madness I've gotten into?"

Fenris stopped pacing. It was a fair question.

Never before had he objected about the way Hawke carried out his affairs as Champion; it was not his place. Besides, what good would it do after six years to advise the man to keep his head down when he was incapable of listening? He could just imagine Hawke's barking laugh upon warning him that politics could not be fought with a knife, and that it was not enough to have slain the Arishok if he could not even see how siding with the mages would be the death of him. It was pointless to even try. All Fenris could do, all he had ever done, was follow after with sword in hand to defend him the only way he knew how.

That was the way it was for years.

How it was before.

Before Danarius' blood blackened the floorboards of the Hanged Man. Before all his hopes and dreams for family spilled across his feet like ashes. Before Hawke knelt beside him to pick up the pieces and took him back without anger or resentment into his arms and his bed and....

_Hanged. Twisted to death. Death by a thousand cuts._

"You risk too much." Fenris blinked hard and let his arms drop, helpless. "You are a fool."

Hawke's face softened. "You're really worried for me?"

"I....am increasingly concerned."

"That if I keep testing Meredith, things will end poorly?"

Fenris had too much pride to nod.

"When has my life ever been safe, Fen?"

"Not often enough. You're good with knives....less tactful in other areas." He flashed him a glare. "Like keeping that tongue of yours in check."

"Yours is happily free today." The corner of Hawke's mouth pinched, either in affection or annoyance, it was hard to tell. "But those men and women were heavily involved in their city's politics. There's always risk in that."

"More like indiscretion rewarded with just ends."

That strange, pained look of recognition again. "And all this time I thought you proud of my achievements."

Perhaps. Hawke had accomplished a great deal in his life, not least of which was becoming Champion. Maybe that was one more link that kept Fenris' tongue chained: that as much as it galled him sometimes, Fenris was proud. He was proud when pirates stepped aside for Hawke on the docks, when robbers and cutthroats went silent as he made his way through the Hanged Man, when Meredith's eyes leaped with fire at the sight of him-

Fenris' nails dug into his palm.

"Why?" he asked, wishing he could stop. "Why involve yourself needlessly?"

"Like that night in the Alienage I 'involved myself needlessly' on the word of a snippity elf?"

"Answer the question."

"Champion's a nice title," said Hawke with a shrug. "I'd like to live up to it."

"You never seemed to care a fig about it before."

Hawke laughed, genuinely this time. "You know, Fen, you don't know _everything_ about me."

"I never claimed-"

"I know, love, it's just....you aren't the first person to start this line of inquiry."

"Who then?"

"My mother."

That brought him up short.

"Not about being Champion, she didn't live to see that." Hawke's eyes drifted to the juniper sighing outside the window. "But after we moved to Hightown she begged me to start a business or nurture that damned mine into something reputable. She never complained about what I did before then, not even when father died and I became a highwayman. There was always the twins and the farm to think about....

"And then suddenly it was just the two of us." Hawke's hand resumed rubbing his dog's ears. "And I just kept doing the same thing I'd always done. Dragons, qunari, bandits....It never occurred to me that my death might kill her, too. 

"So one day I told her, I looked her in the eye and said: 'Mother, if you ask me to stop, if you ask me right now, 'son, never take up the blade again, settle down and become a noble, live quietly,' I'll do it. All you have to do is ask, and I'll give up the only thing my hands know how to do."

"And did she?" asked Fenris.

"She was my mother."

"And you...."

"Went up Sundermount the next day. Hadriana saw fit to ruin out picnic."

A snarl bubbled in Fenris' throat. "Are you saying I made you break your promise?"

"No, I'm saying I'm not good at keeping them when people need me."

"And what if I asked you?" said Fenris.

Hawke went very still. A stripe of light shifted up and down over his eye.

"What if you asked you to to stop involving yourself in this storm?"

"Or else-"

"Or else I'll leave Kirkwall."

The words were out of his mouth before he could catch them, and Fenris realized this was what the whole morning had been building towards. They both knew it was a bluff; he could no more leave Kirkwall than he could tear his own heart out and survive....but Fenris was not in the business of lying, and perhaps not in the business of suffering in silence anymore either.

In any case, it was gratifying to see the man in front of him flinch.

Hawke inhaled and unsheathed a knife from his back--the same that had been once infused with his father's blood--and set it down on the table. He deflated back in his chair as if all the life had let out of him, leaving behind only a skin in its place.

Fenris crossed the room. He picked up the knife, weighed it in his hand, and then flipped the hilt so that the tip pointed at Hawke's heart. The boiled leather of his armor crinkled and resisted. Hawke's eyes never left Fenris', as unconcerned as if he was being prodded with a quill.

"Kirkwall would be remiss without its Champion," murmured Fenris.

"It survived a thousand years without me, I'm sure the city will manage."

"Even the mages?" asked Fenris softly, tracing the knife tip across the now closed lids of Hawke's eyes. "Aren't they where your bleeding heart's loyalty lies?"

"Some." The apple of his throat bobbed against the wandering blade. "Not all."

"And the rest..."

"Are you sure I'm the fool today?"

_Boiled alive. Ripped apart by the mob._

_Assassinated. Betrayed. Beheaded by the Knight-Commander._

_Kirkwall's first and only Champion._

Fenris pressed the knife to Hawke's breast again, felt the beat of his heart push back and pulse through steel into his skin, and suddenly wanted nothing so much as to feel it from the inside.

"I think....." exhaled Fenris, stabbing the knife into the table. "You should be more careful."

"And?" Hawke expelled a breath, but made no attempt to take the blade.

Fenris gripped the chair arms. He leaned close so that his cheek rasped against the stubble of Hawke's throat.

"You are in trouble."

~

It seemed to take an age. Hawke's heavy cloak hit the floor like a curtain, each secret dagger hitting with a thump in pooled clothes as Fenris unspooled the belt from his waist so fast the leather _hsssped_. Before long they were writhing against each other in the dirty sheets of the unmade bed-

A cold nose snuffed Fenris' ear and made him jump. Hawke head fell back with a laugh.

"Just....hang on." The bed creaked as he rose. Hawke grabbed the mabari's collar and dragged him from the room, Barney's nails scritching on the stone floor.

Fenris panted in bed, goosepimples rising on his bare flesh where Hawke had pressed against him. As Hawke pushed a foot against his whining dog's chest and pushed him into the hall, a bar of sunlight slid through the leaves outside as if cast from a glass wind chime, bouncing up and down his side, where the muscles of his chest met the muscles of his back-

Across a thick purple scar.

Fenris' throat went dry.

"Sorry about that." Hawke padded back to the bed. "Do you still want-"

Fenris grabbed his wrist and yanked him into bed. Hawke _oofed_ , then had the breath driven out of him when Fenris straddled and ground into him with a kiss.

He was rougher with him than usual.

~

Much much later, Hawke brought the book back to bed.

He pulled Fenris' sated body close and flipped the pages until he found what he was looking for.

"Aha." He pointed to an entry, "Felipe of the Anderfels, Champion of Wycome. Died peacefully in his sleep tended by his young wife at the fermented age of 104." Hawke turned his head and lipped a stray strand of Fenris' hair. "How much you want to bet my page will say the same thing?"

"I wasn't aware you were in the market for a young wife," murmured Fenris against his chest.

"It'll say, 'The Champion of Kirkwall died at the spry young age of 156, his noble heart burst while making beautiful wrinkly love to his elvhen lover, Fenwib....Because I'll be damned if Philliam, a BARD! doesn't survive to tell the worst version of this story possible."

"I'm glad you find that more distasteful than the thought of you expiring on top of me."

Fenris' tired eyes drifted to the opposite page, to an illustration of a man impaled on a spike on the shield wall of Ostwick. Under it was a simple line-

_"The Maker tosses a coin with our dear Champions, and whichever way it lands, therein lies their tragedy or triumph."_

"I'll be careful," whispered Hawke, setting the book aside and pulling the blankets over them. "I promise."

Fenris slid his arms around him, holding him tight, and wondered, as he brushed a thumb across the scar left by the Arishok, how many lovers had lain in bed with their Champions and listened to the same promise be made.

"Thank you for saying so," said Fenris, and kissed him.

_But I don't believe you._

Maybe someday he would figure out a way to say that, too. Either way the coin landed, Fenris would be there to catch Hawke or fall with him. If he was fortunate, history might even remember him for it.


End file.
